Lately, the saga of the NFL has come to resemble the kind of sweeping epic that Tom Wolfe might love. The elements are all there, intertwined—power, money, greed, hubris, race, glamour, politics, business, morality, comedies intended and unintended. It is a time stamp of a vivid and peculiar American moment, a bonfire of vanities very old and very new.

A little more than a week ago, a star running back, Ray Rice, was expelled from the league—removed not by the wisdom of compassionate leaders, but after a celebrity website published a video taken at a $2 billion luxury casino that had gone bankrupt on the beach.

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WSJ's Lee Hawkins discusses the major corporate sponsors that are dissatisfied with the National Football League's handling of domestic abuse controversies surrounding NFL stars Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson. Photo: AP

This past week the fury moved to Minnesota, where a much bigger star running back, Adrian Peterson, was under siege after being indicted for reckless or negligent injury to a child. Peterson was deactivated by the Vikings for a single game, but the team reversed course on Monday and reinstated him.

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This maneuver outraged Minnesota's governor, Mark Dayton, who is running for re-election, but was also a key proponent of the Vikings's under-construction billion-dollar stadium, for which the state is kicking in $500 million.

The Vikings, who host a Super Bowl in 2018, may need the governor more than they need the running back. In the early hours from Tuesday to Wednesday, they again removed Peterson from the active roster.

On Wednesday, Vikings brass held a news conference in which they praised themselves for getting it right—to be specific, getting it right after getting it wrong and then thinking they were getting it right but getting it wrong again.

"Want to talk about the Saints?" Vikings coach
Mike Zimmer
later said, referring to this week's opponent, after a torrent of questions about Peterson. "Anybody?"

This is what happens when a business grows so big that its tentacles wrap around every corner of public life.

But this is exactly what the NFL wanted.

Over the past half decade, the NFL has been widely praised overwhelming the culture and the calendar. A sport with a five-month season became a yearlong obsession, maximizing its minutiae into an endless supply of entertainment. Football turned its dull player draft into a glittery version of Oscar night, full of pre-event speculation and campaigning and even a red carpet. Training camps are chronicled with the intensity of White House briefings. The boom in "fantasy" leagues amped the public's interest in the status of even marginal players.

We could not get enough. And the NFL loved it, encouraged it, nurtured the fascination. The league's commissioner, Roger Goodell, welcomed—encouraged!—the mantle of responsibility that came with being a cultural force. Bring it on.

Now the league is discovering what its elevated position really means. Now it is football that is overwhelmed. Off-field ugliness now runs a parallel track to its on-field drama. Behavior that was habitually under-punished or unpunished has been rushed to the surface. Later Wednesday the Carolina Panthers put defensive end Greg Hardy—another player amid a domestic-violence case—on the commissioner's exempt list.

This is a recognizable arc in big business. Protected by billions in revenue and its armada of eager networks and sponsors, the NFL has carried itself with an air of infallibility. They presented themselves—to borrow a Wolfe-ism—as masters of the universe. The game was so popular it could rumble through any trouble. It has carried on through serious concerns about long-term player health. Late last week came the news that the league—amid a financial settlement with former players—expected nearly a third of its players to experience some kind of cognitive problems later in their lives. On Wednesday a new drug policy was announced which included a faint four-game suspension for HGH use, hardly a serious penalty from a league that reprimands over touchdown celebrations.

Meanwhile, the NFL expects the national mania to resume, because the national mania always resumes.

Football may not be so confident forever. Rice and Peterson are hardly the first accused NFL players, but they have been a catalyst for reconsideration and the return of a lot of unsavory history. All the overlooked hypocrisies are up for review. Parties that have long benefited from the league's largess—politicians, sponsors, media surrogates—are experiencing epiphanies of doubt. It may not be a revolt, but football is being asked to change its culture on the fly.

There's a silver lining of hope that the cases of Rice and Peterson could provoke a useful national dialogue about serious social topics.

So far, no. It's worth remembering that there are a lot of NFL teams that aren't even good at being NFL teams.

Football sought this position in the culture. The NFL wanted the country and the calendar. But the reversals in Baltimore and Minnesota are not the maneuvers of a business that has a grip on the national mood. It has repeatedly misunderstood public sentiment, and vulnerability has crept in. In New York, the quiet commissioner is said to be safe. That's a lot of faith in the fierce loyalty of 32 billionaires.

This story feels chaotic, ongoing, evolving. The turbulence of the powerful is a gripping and sadly familiar tale.